


Carry That Weight

by SBG



Series: Halloweenish [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 18:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8411899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SBG/pseuds/SBG
Summary: A message to Dean's cell from an unexpected source sends the Winchesters on a hunt that weighs heavily on both of them.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written long ago in a season far, far away. For a bit, I wrote stories intended for Halloween, so I thought I'd package them all up and plop them here. This is the first. I know there's (sadly, imo) not much of an audience for gen in this fandom, let alone really old gen. ;)

Sam Winchester knew his concern for Dean smothered his brother, and so of late he had tried harder to stem any outward displays of it. On nights like this, when they’d finished one hunt and hadn’t tracked down another yet, it was difficult. They fell into old patterns. Dean drowned his sorrow with beer and competition against poor fools who didn’t know a hustler when they saw one. He himself lurked in a bar’s smoky corner reading newspapers, draining his beer slowly and mostly just watching that Dean didn’t start a fight; violence seemed another outlet for Dean, and they couldn’t afford the possible injuries. Never mind that it secretly freaked Sam out to see Dean blind with unfounded rage.

“Get you another one, honey?”

He looked up at the sole waitress the bar had in the back room. She looked harried and was rather plain, but not unattractive. Her expression was slightly wary, her eyes carefully indifferent as she waited for him to give her an answer. He wondered how many times she got hit on and groped a night. Sam gave her a soft half smile and a headshake. 

“Thanks, though,” he said. 

She looked visibly relieved, and he sadly thought it was just because he hadn’t tried to cop a feel. She flashed him a smile, which changed her from plain to pretty. Smiling looked like something she didn’t do much, or couldn’t, around there. Even without trying, though, she probably made decent tips. Dunk people were generous, and the place was crowded with them. She snared the near-empty basket of popcorn from the table and slid away, back into the throng of rough bar patrons. She hadn’t gone five steps when he saw a guy grab her ass. He thought maybe it wasn’t Dean who’d start a fight that night, his muscles tensing to help her out if she needed it. She easily skirted away from the man, scowling and calling out in an annoyed tone. Sam relaxed. He returned his attention to the newspapers and surreptitious vigil on Dean. 

Nothing in the headlines jumped out at him, and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing as far as he was concerned. It was late October, and he really just wanted to submerge for the next week or two. Dad’s death and Dean’s despondency hadn’t made him forget Jess’ anniversary was right around the corner, though he tried so very hard not to think about it. It had gotten easier over the past year, that was true, but lately he started seeing her face again, whenever he closed his eyes or saw a tall woman with long blonde hair. It was like he had an internal alarm, warning bells going off. A frigging appointment reminder set to pop up every other day until he finally did something about it. But he wouldn’t even dream of mentioning it to Dean. He couldn’t.

He cast his eyes over to the pool table. Dean was smirking, leaning over the table to take what was clearly the winning shot. Sam flicked his attention to the pile of money stacked on one end of the table. They could use the cash, but the pile was big enough it might make the loser – a walking cliché of a man, huge, bald, with a long goatee and a beat-up biker jacket – angry. And his friends. Sam counted five of them hovering in the near vicinity, and who the hell knew how many other people in the bar were likely to side with the locals in the case of a dispute. He gathered up his things, just as a precaution. Dean lined up the easy shot, but then Sam watched him pause, and a strange expression came over his face. 

Dean lifted the cue and stood up, fished around in his pocket, pulled out his cell. Sam frowned. Dean wouldn’t pull from a shot just to answer the phone. The bald biker looked like he was deriding Dean, who completely ignored the taunting. Through the smoke (seriously, they were either in the only state that still allowed smoking public establishments or the people here just didn’t give a damn), he saw Dean pale, his jaw clench as he read the phone’s screen. There was too much noise to hear what Dean said something to bald biker guy, but Sam didn’t have to because Dean walked away from the game without finishing. There was laughter and jeering that he _could_ hear, but no one stopped his brother from leaving the table. Easy money for them.

“Dean, what is it?” he said. Up close, Dean was almost colorless and his eyes seemed, somehow, more hollow than usual. “What’s wrong?”

Sam wasn’t sure Dean could utter words while his jaw was clenched so tightly. Instead of speaking, his brother lifted the cell up to show him the screen. It was short, reading only: 47.52. –92.137. Sam didn’t have to see whom the message had come from. There was only one person who’d ever sent Dean messages like that, and he kicked himself for not telling Dean he’d kept Dad’s cell charged and on. He thought maybe someone might call it someday looking for help, but he’d never thought _it_ would call _them_. He hadn’t checked anything beyond voice messages. 

“I was going to tell you, Dean, I swear. I just didn’t…”

The hollowness of Dean’s eyes gave way to sheer disbelief followed by rage, and then went back to dull and lifeless, all within the span of a second. Without a word, Dean turned around and headed for the door. Sam frantically scooped up the newspapers and journal and rushed after him. God, the look on Dean’s face when he saw a message from one John Winchester staring back at him…Sam had fucked up, big time. He didn’t even know how to talk to Dean most of the time now; he didn’t know how he was ever going to be able to explain his logic about Dad’s phone in a way that wouldn’t just cause Dean more hurt. Sorry wasn’t adequate enough, but he was so, so damned sorry. 

He lost sight of his brother as Dean moved from the back room to the front, and for some reason that filled him with panic. He picked up his pace. His thigh smacked into on of the pool tables as he hurried by it. He winced, but kept his momentum, relieved when he caught the back of Dean’s head, not yet at the external door. For some reason he couldn’t give name to, Sam thought maybe if he didn’t catch up with Dean, then Dean would just leave him. If this was what Dean had felt all last year, then Sam was even more sorry than he already had been because it was a shitty feeling. 

He thought he was going to be okay when it all went to hell. So intent on Dean, he didn’t see the back room waitress until he plowed right into her, sent her tray and drinks flying and knocked her to the sticky floor. Sam gaped down at her, horrified and yet still panicked about Dean. He crouched down to help her up.

“I’m so sorry, are you okay?” he said, glancing at her and then at the door Dean had just exited through. 

“Fine. I knew you were different than the guys who usually come here, but I didn’t count on a full body tackle.”

“I really am sorry.” He pulled her to her feet, awkwardly eyeing the wet spots on her shirt from the spilled drinks. She smelled like a distillery. “How many drinks were you carrying?”

“I…”

“Never mind.” He pulled forty bucks out of his wallet and gave it to her. “I hope this will cover them.”

He took off, barely aware of her confused thank you. There wasn’t time. Dean was outside without him. If he got to the parking lot and the car was gone, Sam wasn’t sure what he’d do. He wasn’t even sure why he thought Dean would just up and leave him. Dean had _never_ done that, except it felt like Dean _was_ doing that. Dean’s departure wasn’t physical, but it was painful enough that it might as well be. And he’d just unwittingly made it worse.

The brisk, fresh night air was a shock to his lungs, a welcome one after the bar. He took a couple of deep breaths, in part to steel himself, and trotted to where they’d parked. Sam let out the last breath harshly as relief washed over him. The car was still there. Dean was, too, perched on the hood, attention riveted to the ground. He approached wordlessly, sat down next to his brother. They sat that way for a few minutes, in a familiar holding pattern Sam still hadn’t figured out how to break from. He had to believe that be able to recover the bond they’d only just started getting back before the demon and Dad.

“You have Dad’s phone somewhere.”

“I keep it charged and turn it on sometimes. I thought maybe someone would call for help on it.”

“That’s creepy, and you should have told me.”

“I wanted to, Dean, but I didn’t know how. You’ve been so closed off, man. Sometimes I don’t know to talk to you in a way that won’t piss you off or make you feel worse.”

“Yeah, because letting me get a frigging email from our dead father is a surefire way to make me happy.”

Sam just stared at Dean’s profile helplessly. He wanted nothing more than for Dean to talk to him, but every time he did, Sam was always at a loss for adequate words. It was some kind of cruel irony that even normal conversation didn’t feel anything like normal. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really didn’t think anything like this would happen.”

Dean laughed and looked over to him. “You were always too busy butting heads with the guy to realize the scope of his skills. Five years from now we’ll probably still be getting surprises from him.”

“Yeah.” Sam smiled a little. Dean’s laugh didn’t meet his eyes, which Sam expected but was still disappointed about. He didn’t feel better, per se, but his strange panic was mostly gone. At least Dean was talking to him. “I suppose so.”

“Let’s get out of here. We apparently have a job.”

Sam bobbed his head once, slid off the hood of the car and headed for the passenger seat. He didn’t know how he felt about blindly following coordinates their father had the forethought to set up before he died. He still found himself wanting to make it up his lifelong antagonism with Dad, latched onto hunts like a little kid playing leech on someone’s leg. It was just discomfiting, and he couldn’t help but think what the chances were that their father had known he wouldn’t be around. He thought pretty good. He thought Dad had never expected to make it out alive, maybe hadn’t even _wanted_ to make it out alive. He loved his father, but that was just fucked up.

While Dean drove, he reached for the GPS to look up where Dad wanted them to go. Where Dad _had_ wanted them to go. He agreed with Dean; it was disconcerting to think about their father inputting instructions so far in advance, though it likely meant whatever they were headed for was correlated to the date or time of year. It seemed he wasn’t going to get his down time after all, and he found that was okay as well. If he thought about it, rationalized, it was probably better that he’d have something to focus on besides Jess, and Dad, and Dean. He’d fall easily into the escapism hunting had become for him, his own screwed up way to sublimate.

“So where are we going?” Dean said.

Sam hadn’t plugged in the coordinates yet. He did so and waited a second for the GPS to guide itself.

“Looks like…Minnesota. About fifty miles from Duluth, a town called Hoyt Lakes.”

“Sounds exciting.”

Northern Minnesota was probably already cold at night, cool during the day. Not what most people would choose, but Sam enjoyed some crispness in his autumn air. Plus, a tiny town in the Iron Range was about as far away from Palo Alto and Stanford as a person could get. He just wished they had some idea what they were up against. Dad’s cryptic message would have no follow ups. There could be something in the journal.

“Ever been there?” he said. “No unfinished business.”

“Nope, not this time.”

“I was hoping there’d be an easy way to track this down.”

“Check the journal.”

Dean hadn’t leafed through their dad’s book since he died, and he usually looked like a kid whose dog had just been taken to Aunt Polly’s farm up north whenever Sam used it as a reference. He nodded, but didn’t move. The journal was in his bag, in the trunk. It was too late to start the drive without sleep anyway. He could check it out tomorrow.

~*~*~

The town of Hoyt Lakes, tiny though it was, bustled with activity. According to the tacky banner strung up at the edge of town, the annual Great Pumpkin Festival was about to kick off. Lucky them. Not only would they have to deal with the town’s inhabitants possibly being put in harm’s way, but also those of neighboring communities. Dean hated Halloween – regular people had no idea what kind of shit usually went down that night, and as far as he was concerned it wasn’t fun to dress up as the monsters he killed for a living – and he hated how they had ended up in northern Minnesota in the first place. Dad was reaching out to screw with his head even posthumously, and he kind of resented it. It weighted on his shoulders, much like Dad’s parting gift did.

Dad had noted in his journal one mysterious disappearance in Hoyt Lakes seven years ago, on Halloween night. Several weeks later, the body was found with its flesh torn apart, bones crunched. It wasn’t much to go on. Actually, it didn’t even really smack of supernatural to him, but it obviously had to their father. The guy was usually so thorough, though, which meant he’d probably intended at one point to dig into this more deeply and then ran out of time. Because of Dean. Because of Sam, too. He looked over at his brother, who had no idea and could not have any idea, ever. He knew what it would do to Sam. No pressure on him or anything. He swallowed his unhappiness. It wasn’t Sam’s fault and Dean didn’t blame him, really, except he did at the same time. 

“There’s the library. I hope they have the resources we need.”

“There’s no library in the world that doesn’t retain newspapers from the dawn of time,” Dean said.

He hoped they didn’t have to sift through actual newspapers. In a town with population hovering around two thousand, resources for libraries were more toward the sparse end of the scale than flush and they tended to be far more old school than those in bigger cities. They’d thought about stopping over in Duluth first, but they had a little bit of time. Halloween was still a day and a half away and no one had died yet. Besides, if they started at the source they might stumble across a person who would have insight. Small town librarians were often good sources themselves, and Sam knew how to work his nerdy charm with them. He didn’t even try, really. Sam gave a soft inhalation, like he was going to say something, didn’t, and then repeated the inhalation.

“You know, Dean, you don’t have to do this with me if you don’t want,” Sam said softly. “I know you don’t like the research.”

Dean had never once come out and actually said that. If he’d ever shirked the responsibility, it was because Sam geeked out about it so much and actually seemed to enjoy it where to him it was a necessary evil, an integral part of the hunt nonetheless. It wasn’t like he had skipped the research when he and Dad split up on their own hunts. Since Sam had joined him, he liked seeing his little brother lose himself and all his emo angst for a while, and, true, if they could cover two areas at once, he was usually all for it. Here, though, there wasn’t anything else for him to do, and he wasn’t about to take a tour of the town. Whoever was in charge of decorating for the festivities must have bought every pumpkin from here to friggin’ Fargo, and they were all over the place – the streets were lined with them, every step on every porch had one, or clusters of them. The town was a giant pumpkin patch, all orange and cheerful and nauseating. Their hotel room at the already annoyingly decorated Country Inn had even had three of the suckers in it, until Dean chucked them out the window. There was nothing cheerful about Halloween.

“I don’t not like it,” he said, irritated by the soft tone Sam had used with the offer. Sam walking on eggshells around him lately was getting on his nerves. “Besides, since we have to start by date only it’ll take you forever if you do it alone.”

Sam just nodded and adopted a pensive expression. One of his many pensive expressions, Dean corrected. Sam had about a million of them, and they all looked almost identical. This, too, irritated Dean. It was partly the not blaming Sam while blaming him thing, and partly that, if he admitted it to himself, he was still upset about Sam failing to tell him about Dad’s cell. The call would have sucked out loud either way, but if he’d known it _could_ happen in advance of it actually happening, then maybe he wouldn’t have felt like someone had cut his legs out from under him when he saw Dad’s name on his LED. God, he was so screwed in the head. Knowing that just made it all the worse, because he couldn’t seem to change. 

“Drop me off.” The streets were filled with cars. _It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown_ , he thought. “I’ll ask the librarian to help us get set up while you find a place to park.”

“Yeah, okay.”

At least Sam wasn’t trying to appease him or whatever. It was always easier for Sam to work his little-boy-lost look on his own and, once that was established, it got people talking to them. This innate skill of Sam’s came in handy especially on women over the age of fifty and so, not for the first time, Dean hoped the librarian wasn’t some hot chick just out of school and stuck in Nowheresville. 

He found a parking spot two and a half blocks away from the library. He accidentally ran over the pumpkins on the curb on purpose. He was probably transferring his anger with Sam and just everything onto the stupid, large gourds. He figured that was better than the alternative. By the time he got out of the car, Dean had drawn a crowd of kids. They all looked distraught about the smashed pumpkins – the pulp on the tires was so worth it – and a few of them looked ready to cry.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“It’s MEA weekend,” one of them, a freckly little brown-haired boy, piped up and scowled at him like he should have known that. Whatever MEA weekend meant. “Why’d you drive over the pumpkins?”

“I didn’t see them.” Then he actually started feeling bad about the unprovoked pumpkin war he was singly waging on Hoyt Lakes. “It was an accident.”

“I think you saw them. I think you just have problems or something,” Little Freckles said philosophically, tipping his head to the left a bit. “You should get therapy for that.”

Dean swallowed. The kid was more right than he could know. He just looked at the boy for a minute, then tried to brush aside his unease.

“Look, I really am sorry,” Dean said.

He waved and headed for the library, ignoring the feeling of the kids staring after him. The pumpkin-love that had infected the town was apparently instilled at a very young age. He really hoped this wasn’t some pagan god that required some human sacrifice in trade for a bountiful pumpkin crop every year. Been there, done that. No, again, Dad would have given them more than coordinates and one random tragedy. He started running other ideas through his head, glad for something concrete to focus on. He jogged up to the library’s door and entered the small building. It was busy with kids. MEA weekend, he thought, though he still had no idea what it meant. He had no idea kids these days even still read books, but apparently they did here.

Dean didn’t spot Sam anywhere, unusual since Sam should have stuck out like a sore thumb among all the much, much shorter people. He did spot the librarian, who was well into her sixties and slightly on the round side. He smiled slightly and approached her. She looked up when he neared the desk.

“Ah, you must be looking for Sam. He told me you’d be along.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dean said. He read the placard on the desk. “Marge.” 

“Follow me,” she said with a soft smile. Marge navigated through the children’s section to the adult and beyond, to a narrow staircase at the back of the library. “That Sam is such a polite young man. I wish I could help more.” 

He wondered what Sam had told her he was looking for. It didn’t matter as long as the conversation stayed vague. Dean followed her onto the small landing, where she stopped and gestured.

“We’re happy for any help you can give.”

“Oh, you’re so polite, too,” Marge tutted. “Someone raised you boys right.”

Dean winced and tried to make it look like a smile. Before things could get any more awkward for him, he started up the stairs. He found Sam at the back of the archival room, poring over a yellowed newspaper. That’s what Marge had meant. No microfiche. He supposed they were fortunate to even get the newspapers. He sighed. Sam looked up.

“Yeah,” his brother said. “This is going to be a big pain in the ass.”

He took off his jacket and tossed it across the back of a chair. He rolled up his sleeves and got to work. He figured Sam was checking headlines for the weeks surrounding Halloween, and did the same. It wasn’t as bad as all that. Having a vague inclination of the date and what to look for based on the information Dad had gathered helped. Plus, disappearances and deaths would be big, front page news in a town this size, so all it took was a quick perusal of most papers. They sat reading in relative silence, minutes turning to hours without them really realizing it. They took breaks to stretch and to drink the coffee Marge had brought up to them.

“I’ve got a similar incident,” Dean said at last. “On October 27th, 1959, seventeen year old Randall Gustafson vanished in the woods three miles south of Hoyt Lakes. His body was found a week later, and an animal attack was blamed for the death.”

“And I’ve got two more,” Sam said. Dean looked up. His brother’s eyes were bleary. Truthfully, he looked like crap. “Lacey Janning, fifteen, from Eveleth disappeared from the hayride she was taking with her friends on October 24th, 1990, and was found torn apart two days later, animal attack cited. Bryan O’Malley, twenty-two, of Babbitt, disappeared on October 26th, 1981, same basic thing.”

“Okay, so, most of the incidents have enough space between them that people might not have noticed, but there’s not a concrete pattern. It really does look like animal attacks to the naked eye. And none of them happened after Halloween, which means we’ve got a limited window.”

“Wendigo?”

“We’re in the right place for them this time. I don’t know, though. Wendigos don’t hunt one person at a time. They stockpile and then go underground.”

Sam nodded glumly, ran a hand down his face. His gaze hit on the newspapers spread across the top of the table. They’d read them all, or skimmed. Dean couldn’t be sure they hadn’t missed anything, though even what they’d found didn’t really give them much more information than they started with. There was no specific number of years between events. It wasn’t a gender-specific crime, so that ruled out a number of possibilities. Black Dogs wouldn’t only attack the last week of October and would have been tracked a long time ago, if not by them then by one the multitude of hunters they knew nothing about but where out there fighting the same fight. 

“Huh,” Sam said.

“What?”

“What? Oh, uh, I dunno.” That was a lie. Sam flipped through the papers, his brows knit. “Maybe.”

“Maybe…?”

“All of the attacks took place in the same area. In the woods, south of town. Randall Gustafson was out hunting. Lacey Janning was on the Chamber-sponsored hayride, which happened to run just south of town that year. Bryan O’Malley worked the festival’s Halloween maze, just south of town, went on a break and never came back.”

“So we have a place to look.”

“We have a place to look.”

~*~*~

They were as prepared as they could be. Sam wasn’t sure he liked their plan, now that he’d had time for some consideration. It felt too much like they were walking into the hunt blindly, but Dean had insisted and would have done the patrol on his own if Sam hadn’t caved. Since they didn’t know exactly what to expect, their personal arsenals contained a little of everything. Assuming there was time to actually implement all of them in case of an attack, they would be fine. 

Marge had kicked them out of the library with an offer for a home-cooked meal they declined, and so they hadn’t had time to cross check the land to see if there was something about it that could cause the deaths, burial grounds being the most logical choice there. Nothing about the area, even from what they could tell in the dark, spoke of Ojibwa burial sites, but it wasn’t like either of them were experts on the subject. Unlike the victims, though, they weren’t alone. Sam had no intention of leaving Dean’s vicinity and he was certain the same held true for his brother

“Anything?” he called softly.

“No readings over here, you?”

Sam looked over his shoulder. Dean was ten feet away, turned slightly away from him, holding himself in a way that let Sam knew he was alert for both of them. He was doing the same, so he thought their chances of staying safe were decent. They didn’t know what they were looking for, but they did know to look for something, a small step in the right direction. 

“No, not yet.”

EMF wasn’t foolproof. It might not tell them anything at all, depending on what they were dealing with. The distant sound of laughter reminded him that innocent people were carrying on with their fun not terribly far away. There were two scheduled hayrides for the evening, and the haunted walk the Jaycees had set up outside city limits ran until 10:30 PM. The risk of someone wandering from any of those events was high. All suspected deaths had been relatively young, and probably still a little stupid with a sense of infallibility, people. He hoped it wouldn’t happen again tonight. No, it wouldn’t as long as he and Dean were out there.

“I haven’t come up with any other theories.”

“Me either.”

Nothing they had thought of matched the circumstances closely enough, and they really didn’t have solid information to use yet. Firsthand experience with the spirit or revenant or whatever would answer the question for them, but Sam wasn’t exactly looking for that outcome. He curled and uncurled his fingers around the grip of his handgun nervously. He felt no presence, no psychological effects known for beings like Grey Men or Nix. He supposed it was possible the attacks really were animal in nature, though he doubted it for a couple of reasons. First was that they were close to town. Hoyt Lakes wasn’t part of an ever-expanding city. The wildlife there wasn’t being squeezed out of its habitat; there was no reason for the animals to feel threatened by any of the victims except the hunter. Second was Dad. If he closed his eyes, he could see Dad taking bare notes on something he had only an inclination about. He’d set the reminder for _Dean_ instead. And him by proxy.

“We should probably stick this out until the kids from the festival go home,” he said. Dean didn’t respond. Sam turned toward his brother…and found he was alone. His heart felt like it was in his throat, just like that, with the now familiar feeling that his brother had left him. He knew that wasn’t right. He spun in a slow circle, searching the dark woods with his inadequate flashlight. “Dean?”

More laughter, from farther away this time, and singing. It sounded so discordant in his ears, through the rush of panicked blood that monopolized his hearing. Sam involuntarily recalled the descriptions of the victims. Flayed. Bones crushed. That might be happening to Dean at that very moment and for seconds that seemed to last forever he didn’t know what the fuck to do. 

“Dean!” His shout echoed. Sam forced himself to breathe more slowly, concentrate on hearing anything that could lead him in the right direction. He whispered to himself, “Come on, Dean, give me a sign here.”

Rustling, to the northwest of him. Sam didn’t think, he just switched off his flashlight and moved slowly and carefully through the crisp, dead leaves. He could fire the gun, splash holy water and then have his blade out in a matter of five seconds, he just needed something to focus all of that on. More movement, directly to his north this time, and closer. He was on the right trail. He had to be. Every fiber of his being wanted to call out for Dean again. He knew better, quelled his instinct like a good hunter should. He would be damned if he was going to lose Dean tonight, to some nameless foe. It just wasn’t going to happen like that. Not tonight, not _ever_. He missed Dad, but losing Dean would kill him. 

He did what he’d always been so reluctant to do. Sam hunted. He hunted with skill and prowess he didn’t want to have, but did anyway. He tuned out everything, the faint teenaged laughter, the wind in the trees, the slight burble of the nearby river, and concentrated only on the rustling movements he could now discern as footfalls in front of him. He had a Glock loaded with iron rounds in his right hand, a bottle of holy water in his left. He had exorcisms and rites memorized long ago at the tip of his tongue. But most of all he had a burning need to kill whatever had taken his brother.

The footsteps ceased suddenly, and so did Sam. He held his breath, afraid his pursuit had been discovered. He squinted into the darkness, saw a dark shape not fifteen feet in front of him. A dark shape that looked human on bottom and…confusing on top. He took stealthy steps, getting closer so he could see in the dark atmosphere. It was Dean, but he was all wrong. He was halfway buried in the ground, and there was a massive protrusion on his back. No, no. No protrusion. That was the thing they were hunting. 

“Take me there,” it said, its utterance shrill and horrifying. “Reeeesst.”

Dean groaned in response, didn’t move. Couldn’t, with his legs buried. The creature, whatever the hell it was, let out an ear-numbing shriek and began pounding at Dean’s head, neck and shoulders. Sam rushed forward with a shout. Unable to get a clear shot with the gun, he squirted holy water at it and hoped it would have some effect. Barring that, he hoped his presence would distract it and get it off Dean. The moment water hit the thing, it vanished. Sam fell to his knees on the ground, next to Dean. 

“Dean?” he said fearfully. Sam tugged at Dean’s shoulders, tried to get him turned over. He couldn’t, his brother’s legs were buried to the thigh and he was afraid twisting at the torso would cause him pain. “Dean?”

“I’m okay, Sammy,” Dean said.

That was patently untrue. Sam fumbled for his flashlight and flicked it on, turning the beam away from Dean’s face. His brother was covered in dirt and detritus, bruises and blood. The injuries looked bad, and those were just the surface ones. He suspected some deeper injury could have occurred. Dean didn’t get taken out by an evil thing easily.

“Liar.” He said it lightly, smiling at Dean though his concern remained. “What the fuck was that thing?”

“Heavy. A really heavy weight on my shoulders. Too much to carry.” Dean spoke in clipped, semi-sensible sentences, the words sounding like they could be describing something else entirely. That thing Dean was carrying around with him, the thing keeping Sam from connecting with his brother, probably. Sam frowned. “Couldn’t do it.”

“It was huge, Dean. Why didn’t you go for your weapons?” 

He didn’t want to give Dean the third degree, but he didn’t want him to pass out either. His brother looked about four seconds away from slumber. Sam dug at the dirt around Dean’s buried legs with the butt of his gun. Dean would _kill_ him if he were cognizant enough to realize one of their most expensive weapons was now serving as a shovel. 

“It vanished at the first drop of holy water.”

“I tried, Sam. I couldn’t move. Was like it froze me, and once it had me, it had me.” Dean sighed. “At first it wasn’t so heavy, but it kept getting worse and worse.”

Okay, Dean’s speech was slurred, but better. Sam grunted and tried to dig faster, abandoning the Glock for his two hands. The wounds he could see wouldn’t need immediate triage, so he could get them to the hotel and sanitize before going at the cuts on Dean’s forehead and neck with butterfly bandages. The earth was loosely packed, as if the thing had bore a hole like a worm and somehow Dean had just been caught in it, like instant quicksand. That was better than the alternative of packed dirt, but it was strange. He couldn’t think of a single thing that could make a person just sink into the ground like that. Dean was better at demonology, and later maybe he could come up with something. 

“That’s kind of freaky,” he said inanely, just wanting to keep Dean with him. The legs were almost free.

“It wasn’t exactly fun, but we’ve faced worse,” Dean said, but didn’t sound like he meant it. He sounded like he still had its weight on his back, that it was still forcing him underground. Sam frowned again. “It just caught me off guard.”

Sam pursed his lips. That wasn’t like Dean. Hell, though, he’d been taken off guard as well. Sam had really thought they were close enough together back there to prevent this from happening. He grunted, yanked at Dean’s legs. Dean braced himself and wriggled free, rolling as he did, ending up lying flat on his back. Sam rubbed a hand across his sweaty brow.

“I suppose now we know a little more about it. What was it saying to you?”

“It wanted me to take it somewhere. Latched onto me like I was supposed to give it a piggy back ride.”

“Did it say where, or anything else?”

“We weren’t having fucking afternoon tea, Sam,” Dean said crankily.

Sam took that as a hint to shut up, so he did, but he couldn’t not stare at Dean with worry. Dean stared up at the dark canopy of night sky. After a moment, Dean sat up slowly, then stood. He wavered for a second, and favored his left side. Sam noted it and would check for bruised or broken ribs later. For now, Dean was mobile and that was a good thing. 

“Let’s call it a night?” Sam said.

“No arguments. Sounds like the kids are all done for today, it should be safe out here.”

Sam hoped so, because his primary concern was making sure Dean was actually all right. He knew his brother, and just because he was on his feet didn’t mean he was okay. He also wanted to start searching lore, with the new information they had. The next time they set foot in this part of the woods, they would be one hundred percent prepared. He didn’t want the thing near Dean again. Sam pulled himself to his feet as well and re-oriented himself. The car was due south, if he remembered correctly. He’d better remember correctly. It would be just their luck they’d run into the thing twice in one night. 

They made it to the car without incident, though. Sam unloaded the weapons, and Dean actually climbed in the driver’s seat. Sam had to almost forcibly move his brother, but the protestations ended quickly. If that wasn’t testament to how shitty Dean felt, then Sam didn’t know anything at all about him. With Sam at the wheel, they quickly and safely made it to the hotel in about five minutes. There were some benefits to small towns, though he hated to think what would have happened had Dean’s injuries been worse. It was always a risk, and he hated that. One day, one of them would end up too damaged to fix out in the middle of nowhere. 

Sam walked in front of Dean, hiding him from the night auditor’s stares. In the bright hotel lobby lights, Dean looked like he’d fought with a giant cheese grater and lost. It wasn’t pretty, and they didn’t need any attention on them. They were visitors and, if for some horrible reason they weren’t fast enough and another local died, any suspicious behavior on their part would be noted by someone. He didn’t want to give that idea much credence. It might have cost them, but they’d figure this thing out now.

At the room, Sam did a quick once over of Dean. Two ribs bruised (deep, purple) and contusions along his arms, neck and face. And massive cuts and scrapes along any part of him that hadn’t been protected by clothing. Another deep scratch on his leather coat. There was nothing too terrible, though Sam could read the pain in Dean’s eyes and in the way his posture kept getting stiffer and stiffer. Dean eventually cussed at him and headed for the shower.

Sam booted up the laptop and got to work, but his attention kept wandering toward the bathroom door.

~*~*~

The morning after an attack almost always felt worse than the actual event. There was time for the injuries to settle in and make themselves at home. Every one of Dean’s muscles was stiff and his head pounded in time with his pulse. Being a supernatural critter’s punching bag usually left him feeling like he’d spent the prior night on the bender to end all benders, and this one was no different. He didn’t remember much of what happened once they got to the car, a vague notion that Sam had insisted on driving and that was all. He had stayed on autopilot, like the thing had drained him beyond all caring; he was there but not really there. He tried damned hard not to let himself get in that state, but recently it was exactly that state which came as second nature. He was so tired, all of the time, and when he wasn’t tired he was pissed off. He figured it was safer to stay numb, less worrisome for Sam at least.

He rolled out of bed slowly and headed for the bathroom. Sunlight streamed in the window through a crack in the drapes. Dean squinted around the room, didn’t see Sam anywhere. He was actually relieved his brother wasn’t there, hovering and fretting. They’d both sustained far worse injuries than he had last night, not that long ago, and Sam’s concern would just feel wrong and asphyxiating. He shut the bathroom door and peed, then moved to the sink, where he caught his reflection in the mirror. 

The bruising on his face and neck was livid, and his skin was littered with nicks and cuts. He peeled the bandage on his forehead back, revealed a moderately deep wound, almost exactly where he still had a faint scar from the accident. He certainly didn’t need the reminder, but there it was, staring at him. He tossed the soiled bandage in the garbage, winced at the pull of muscles from somewhere else on his body. He lifted his T-shirt and checked out the purple and magenta bruising on his left side. None of his injuries would prevent him from getting the job done, but they still hurt like hell. 

He heard the electronic key card and faint metallic click of the room door as it unlocked. Sam. Dean splashed water on his face, less as a means to get himself awake and ready to go and more to brace himself to deal with his little brother. His overbearing, annoyingly gentle little brother who would be even more overbearing and annoyingly gentle with him now. He wasn’t being fair and he knew it. The water helped clear his head but did nothing to help him get ready for Sam. He sighed and exited the bathroom. Sam was at the ugly square table in the corner, a tray with two steaming cups of coffee in front of him, pastry bags tucked in one of the empty slots, napkins in the other. Dean’s stomach growled.

“Morning,” Sam said. Dean waited for the follow up question about his injuries, but it didn’t come. Sam limited his concern to furtive half-looks in his direction, which he probably thought Dean didn’t notice. “I figured you could use something to eat.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” 

Dean threw his clothes on quickly and followed the lure of food and drink. He didn’t expect much, surprised when the coffee was actually reasonably good and the doughnuts fresh. The dark circles under Sam’s eyes were evidence of a late night, and otherwise his brother looked haggard and slightly unkempt. Normally he’d say something about it. Dean shoved half of a chocolate old fashioned into his mouth in one giant bite. He knew that would make Sam stop looking at him. Sam did avert his eyes, but it didn’t last long enough.

“You took the bandage off.”

“Yeah, it itched.”

“Looks like it would.” Sam’s face twisted uncomfortably, and Dean knew that his brother was flashing back to a smashed Impala the way he had, and to all that had come after it. Sam cleared his throat. “How’re the ribs?”

“Sore, but nothing I can’t handle.” Dean shoved the rest of the doughnut in his mouth, chased it down with a swig of hot coffee. “I told you before that I’m fine, Sam.”

“I wasn’t trying to say you aren’t,” Sam said quietly. “Look, I care about you. If I hadn’t found you last night you’d be dead, Dean. You were just gone, man. I can’t…”

“I know,” Dean said, cutting Sam off before he could say anything worse and before his expression turned sad-eyed and the grown man became a four-year-old boy just wanting Dean to tell him everything would be all right soon. Dean couldn’t tell Sam that and have it not be a lie. “I know, okay?”

But he still hated it when Sam made him feel guilty about being an asshat when he was _trying_ to be an asshat. If Sam had been the one grabbed, Dean knew he would feel the same way. His brother wasn’t doing or saying anything that he wouldn’t himself, and didn’t deserve the asshattery. Sam being himself wasn’t reason for it. Mostly, it was always Dad’s words, pressing down on him, eating away at the back of his head. All the time. For some reason the nicer Sam was, the more he reminded Dean of those words, and so the more it hurt to be around him. It wasn’t like he could explain that to Sam, or that Sam could figure it out on his own. The promise of a horrible secret, too, just made Dean miserable around the one person he had left.

“I’m sorry.” Dean gave a weak smile and a shoulder shrug. “I just can’t believe I let that thing get the drop on me.”

Sam nodded, didn’t look totally convinced that Dean was just embarrassed about falling prey. Last night, Dean had to admit to himself, he had partially wanted the thing to come after him. Both to keep Sam safe and to…no, he didn’t really know why he’d moved away from Sam. It was like something had called to him. Then when the creature did jump on him, the pressure on his back was so familiar, a physical representation of what he walked around with every day. For one moment he heard the thing’s plea and _wanted_ to carry that weight, to see if he could. In some crazy way, it had seemed the perfect test for his life as a whole. After that initial moment was over, he no longer had a choice but to haul that creature wherever it wanted. 

“Yeah, about that thing,” Sam said. “I searched a bit while you were sleeping, based on what happened last night.”

He hadn’t made it a hundred yards before he’d started faltering, shaking, and that scared him spitless even now. Despite that, though, Dean did what he had to do. He had kept trying, silently, to move forward while the load on his back got heavier and bulkier, until the creature grew frustrated. Then his legs had just sunk into the ground. He’d crazily thought that the thing had somehow known that was where Dean should be, dead and buried, that it was just trying to fix what Dad had made go wrong. He swallowed thickly, the aftertaste of doughnut in his mouth like the dirt he should be buried in. He took another swallow of coffee, trying to get rid of the earthy taste. It only made the coffee taste like crap too. He grimaced.

“And?”

“I think I have a pretty good idea of what it is. In Scandinavian folklore, there’s a creature called a myling. Basically, it’s the vengeful spirit of a baby whose mother took out to the woods or remote area and left it to die.”

Dean sat up straighter. Some things about humanity still managed to surprise him.

“Why would anyone do that? That’s sick.”

“Well, the lore indicated the babies were either from unwed mothers, or they were sickly and would likely die anyway, or even just babies the family simply couldn’t afford to feed,” Sam said. “Mylings’ behavior patterns fit everything that happened last night. They can paralyze people on sight, like you said happened to you. They’re malevolent, seeking revenge even if their mother is already deceased. If a person happens near where they were abandoned, they’ll jump on his or her back and demand to be carried to a cemetery, wanting to rest on hallowed ground. The problem is that the myling gets heavier the longer it’s carried, too heavy for most to handle.” 

“So heavy that people sink into the ground?” Dean said. That made more sense than his earlier illogical assessment, though he didn’t think it had been that heavy. Sam nodded. “That seems kind of counterproductive.”

“Yeah. But if that happens, the myling knows that the person can’t fulfill the task. It’ll get so enraged and lash out brutally. Once they were trapped like that, the myling would be able to maul someone to death pretty easily.”

“Sounds like our thing, except none of the victims were found halfway buried.”

“Yeah. Oh, and iron and water will repel it, but they probably won’t kill it. I _think_ all we need to do is carry it to the cemetery and put it to rest. I’m not really sure about that, though.”

Some poor dead baby ghost was responsible for butchering at least four people, and only because it wanted to be where it was supposed to be – at rest. In the ground. That wasn’t such a terrible thing at all. Hell, Dean understood the feeling too well himself. He rubbed at his aching temples. He couldn’t believe he was empathizing with some evil thing, especially some evil thing that had tried to kill him. He could buy the lore from hundreds of years ago, but Hoyt Lakes wasn’t really that old of a town in the grand scheme. It would probably have happened more recently, and he couldn’t quite wrap his head around that.

“Wouldn’t someone have noticed a baby going missing?” he said after a minute.

“You’d think. We might have to confirm that somehow before we’ll know for sure it’s a myling. I just can’t figure out how – like you said, a disappearing baby would raise suspicion. People would search for it, and probably find it.”

“Maybe no one knew the woman was pregnant, therefore couldn’t know to look.”

“Maybe. We still don’t know why the deaths have only happened in late October.”

“We don’t know that they have. We didn’t check for anytime else.” Dean rubbed his head more. They were spinning their proverbial wheels. He’d rather just figure out what to do to get rid of the thing, but he suspected Sam was going to be pedantic about it. “We could get mired down in the details or we could just go deal with it. We need to get it to the cemetery, right, but do we really need to know what family plot to bury it in or if there were more attacks? Those things don’t matter.”

“All the lore says is that mylings seek rest on hallowed ground, so that part we could skip. But Dean, we don’t know if we have to bury the actual being or its remains. That’s something I don’t think we should take a chance one and find out the hard way it’s the other,” Sam said. Dean sighed. He suspected he was in for another day at the library. “Bobby could probably give us the information we need on that _and_ tell us if we need to bury it somewhere specific in the cemetery or just within its boundaries.”

That was more like it. Bobby was even more with the research-fu than Sam. 

“And we already know the general area to look for remains anyway, in case we need them,” Dean said hopefully. Actually, he was pretty sure he knew exactly where to go. “So if we don’t have to bury the thing on a family plot or something, then we don’t really need to tackle the impossible task of tracking down someone who obviously didn’t want anyone to know she had a kid. If she’s already dead I doubt we’d find anyone who knew her story, and if she isn’t dead, what would we do? Randomly ask women if they ever had a secret baby that they left in the woods to die?”

“Okay, Dean, you made your point. I just want all the bases covered.”

They kept not saying what they were probably both thinking –no matter the details, someone was going to have to carry the myling to its resting place. There was probably safety in numbers, making it unlikely the creature would go after both of them if they went out in the woods together. 

Dean knew two things: that for it to work only one of them would bear the weight, take the risk, and that it wasn’t going to be Sam.

~*~*~

“Thanks, Bobby. Yeah, we’ll be careful,” Dean said and hung up the phone. Sam looked up at his brother expectantly. “Good news. Bobby said you were right about burying it, and it’s the actual myling, not the baby’s remains. He also said it wasn’t tied to the mother, so anywhere on hallowed ground would do the trick.”

“That is good news.”

Sam frowned back down at the map spread out in front of him on the bed. The bad news was that Hoyt Lakes Memorial Cemetery was on the northwest side of town, and the straightest line between it and the haunting site was right through woods they were unfamiliar with. They’d have to wait until night to get it done without being caught digging in the cemetery (never mind carting around a hideous supernatural being), and to make sure all festival activities were over, both things making a hike through the wooded area more difficult. Dean had already experienced the myling once, and hadn’t made it very far, which didn’t bode well for the four or so mile trek that it would take.

 

“What?”

“We were, what, three miles south of town last night?” Dean gave a nod in response. Sam pointed on the map. “The cemetery’s way up here. We’re looking at a four-mile walk. That’s a long way to go with an evil, growing thing on your back.”

Dean swallowed, looked vaguely queasy for a second. He covered well, but not well enough. Sam didn’t know what that was about, and no matter how hard he tried Dean was going to keep shutting him out. Whatever Dean was shouldering, he thought maybe its mass was even bigger than the myling’s. If that wasn’t one of the most terrifying things to think about, then Sam didn’t know what was. 

“I should be able to do it,” Dean said.

Sam looked at his brother sharply. He knew two things: that for it to work only one of them would bear the weight, take the risk, and that it wasn’t going to be Dean. No way. 

“Dean, no,” he said. Sam shook his head, as if he needed the emphasis. “ _No_.”

“You don’t think I can.”

Sam pursed his lips. Apparently Dean’s short-term memory was shot to hell. Less than twenty-four hours ago the thing had sucked him into the freaking dirt and had beat the shit out of him. It wasn’t a surprised, really, that Dean had volunteered anyway, but the very thought of Dean going out there and failing again made him cold to the core. Selfishly, _he_ couldn’t take that, didn’t want the chance of losing Dean.

“It’s not that. Under normal circumstances, I think you could. You’re the strongest person I know,” Sam said. “But you’re injured, Dean. I don’t _care_ if you say you’re fine. I’m not an idiot, I can see you’re sore. It’s too risky, and you know it.”

“So, what, you think I’m going to let you do it? Just look at your track record.” Dean mirrored his headshake, and Sam pretended not to be hurt by the implication that he’d had never been able to pull his own weight during the hunt. “I’ll be fine. You’ll, I don’t know, hide until it latches on and if it gets rough, you can dispel it.”

“You’re crazy. You know it makes more sense for me to do this.”

To his recollection, Sam had very rarely won an argument with Dean, even when he was as right as he was about this. His whole life, all he wanted from his father was to be treated like Dean and all he’d ever got for arguing that point was to be treated even more like a kid. All he had wanted from Dean had been to be an equal, but it was the same thing. Sam spent his whole life feeling choiceless, helpless and frustrated. The only time he’d ever got what he wanted had cost him so much, and it turned out even then Dad hadn’t trusted him to be okay on his own, checking on him at Stanford. Dad had been right, he thought, and the doubt crept forward. There, too, went that twinge again, a year without Jess compounded with the reminder that Dad was gone forever. He could not lose Dean. He just couldn’t.

“Sam, this thing is nasty. I don’t like it.” 

“It’s not like I’m excited about it myself,” he said. “But Dean, I can’t have you out there getting more hurt than you already are. I _can’t_ let you take the risk.”

Dean stared at him, unblinking, for so long Sam started getting disconcerted. There was something in his brother’s eyes, the same something that had been there in flashes since Dad had died. Sam was so damned afraid Dean was going to keep arguing until he inevitably lost and all that remained was the horrible panicky feeling that his brother was going to leave him like everyone he loved did. But then Dean finally nodded silently and Sam was able to breathe normally again. He couldn’t take whatever intangible thing Dean carried with him, but he thought maybe if he could do this, then Dean would understand the burden could be shared.

“We need to walk the route first, get the lay of the land,” Dean said. “And we need to do everything we can to make this work. Dig a grave for it first, find a route that’s fast but takes advantage of the proximity to water.” 

Sam was so amazed Dean had given in he wasn’t sure he could actually believe it. He bobbed his head up and down once. Then a different sort of panicky feeling set in, one that made him wonder what he’d gotten himself into. How did he think he could handle what Dean hadn’t been able to? He tried to ignore that. There wasn’t room for uncertainty. He _would_ do this, if only because he couldn’t let Dean do it. 

“We have all afternoon to scout the trail. We can head to the cemetery at nightfall.” Sam chewed on his lip. “Dig the grave and then go attract the myling to me.”

“Yeah, all that should be easy.”

“We should get started.”

They had to fight the crowds and Dean’s sudden, rampant hatred for pumpkins, but other than that it was as easy as they’d predicted. The woods actually had a number of wide trails they could use, marked for the heavy snowmobile activity during winter months and hiking during the two months in between that. The trails didn’t take them near enough to water to use as a safeguard, but both agreed a clear path was a better option anyway. At a dead run, Sam figured he could make the hike in about half an hour. That wouldn’t be the case that night, though. He didn’t vocalize his concerns. He didn’t have to, because he was sure Dean felt the same way. 

“Okay, so I’ll keep my phone on speaker so you can hear when it comes for me,” Sam said. They’d walked most of the trail twice already, and now stood next to a small rock formation. “You’re sure this is the spot?”

“Yeah, though you could probably be anywhere around here and still attract it.”

“I just want to be have a specific starting point so I don’t get disoriented.” 

The haunted walk and hayrides would start up soon. They’d keep an eye out for stragglers all night, then get to work. Sam squinted up at the quickly darkening sky. It was pretty out here, the colors not unlike they were in Palo Alto this time of year. He closed his eyes and yelled at himself for going there again. He didn’t need the distraction, and he didn’t know why it was springing back up now, of all times. He’d been fairly good at staying focused on this case. The eerie cry of an owl sounded through the air. He turned toward the sound, opened his eyes in time to see a snow-white owl swoop down from the trees, looking for an early dinner. Sam frowned. White owl, white owl. He thought back to his research. A few sites had suggested seeing a white owl was a precursor to a myling attack, but he hadn’t thought anything about it.

“We should get you out of here before it gets totally dark, Dean.”

Dean didn’t answer. Sam looked back down. His brother was gone. Again. And this time Sam was almost completely unprepared. His knife was in the car, and so was his flask of water. It was too early. This wasn’t supposed to happen until later, after the festival activities shut down for the night. The only thing that was different now was that he knew what had his brother, and had no way to get rid of it. Dean was right about him not pulling his weight. What kind of fool isn’t prepared at all times? His skin felt itchy. His mistake might cost Dean’s life.

“Dean!” he shouted, like déjà vu all over again.

“Over here.” Sam ran toward his brother’s strained voice, stopped short, horrified when he saw Dean was not alone. In the dusky light, the myling almost looked like a mutated black dog. Dean glanced at him, something like resignation, acceptance of fate, in his eyes. “Guess it doesn’t matter if you’re by yourself or not. And I guess Rosemary’s baby here likes me.”

“Damnit, Dean.”

“Take me,” the myling shrieked. “Reeeest.”

Dean winced, and started running at an unsteady gait. Sam followed, heart racing as if he were running full speed, because he couldn’t do anything else. He wanted to tear the thing from his brother’s back. Dean made it further than he had last night before he faltered. Sam reached out, but his brother didn’t fall. Dean grunted as the myling started growing right in front of his eyes. Sam reached for the weapons he did not have, let out a mew of anger and fear. He couldn’t just watch his brother like this.

“Dean, do you have your knife?” Dean was always prepared, unlike him. “Give me your knife.”

“I can do this,” Dean said tightly, and promptly started stumbling. Sam grabbed his arm and steadied him. 

“Dean, please. _Please_.”

The myling grew bigger and screeched again, drowning out anything Dean might have been able to get out. Sam squinted at Dean, and didn’t like the obvious pain that decorated his face or the increasingly unevenness of his pace. Desperate, he kept his hold on Dean’s arm and started to reach for where Dean’s knife would be if he had it. He knew Dean did.

“No, Sam. You can’t,” Dean gasped and pulled away from him. “We’ll lose the chance to kill this bastard.”

Somehow once again, Sam had lost the fight, and could only watch, choiceless, helpless and frustrated, as Dean bore the weight alone. He regained his grasp on Dean, alarmed at the way his brother’s muscles fairly thrummed under his touch. He didn’t know how far they’d gone, at least a mile, maybe more. Time moved quickly and dragged slowly at the same time. He didn’t really care. He knew Dean was not going to make it all the way, and he was terrified beyond all measure. He was going to lose Dean, and Dean was right there next to him.

“Dean, _please_. You can’t,” he said, his voice shaking as much as Dean’s body. “You can’t do this to me. Let me help.”

The myling wailed again, such an angry, chilling sound, and this time wouldn’t shut up. Sam punched it out of frustration, which only made it more volatile. Dean gave a strangled cry as it rained blows on him, punishment for Sam’s offense. It looked like it weighed at least eighty pounds already. Dean fell, hard, and Sam went down on his knees with him. Completely exhausted and beaten, bleeding, Dean tried to duck the myling’s attack and to keep going forward. He wasn’t going anywhere. Sam could see Dean’s left leg, up to his knee, had sunk into the ground. 

As Sam reached for Dean’s knife again, willing it to be there, all he could think was _get the hell off of my brother_ , over and over.

And suddenly a great weight settled on his shoulders. It was as if the myling had heard and heeded his mantra.

~*~*~

Dean hadn’t, even on a subconscious level wanted the myling to go after him this time, but he wasn’t exactly sorry it had. This way, Sam wasn’t in any danger. The creature was heavier than he remembered it being and it smelled worse too. His real focus was on moving. He knew within minutes that he wasn’t going to make it the full four miles, but he couldn’t give up on the second chance to change the outcome and do what he had to do. He knew Sam was right next to him, could feel his presence, but couldn’t let it stop him. If anything, having Sam there made him work all the harder, gave him more strength. Every step in his life was because of Sam, now. Had always been. 

“Dean, please, you can’t, you can’t do this to me.” Sam wouldn’t leave his side, and that gave him more hope and comfort than he’d had in a long while. He could barely hear anything beyond the myling howling and the buzzing in his ears, yet Sam’s voice was clear as a bell. “Let me help.”

It hurt to breathe. Hell, it hurt to blink. The pressure on his back shifted awkwardly for a split second, and then it felt like he was stuck in a landslide, with rock after rock smashing against him and pulling him down. Dean tried to choke back a cry of pain, failed. The myling grew again, and he couldn’t stay on his feet. He tried to prevent the fall, needed to keep going. He crawled when he could no longer jog, but it was like something held him in place. In the mostly horizontal position Dean now found himself in, the creature’s weight felt even heavier than when standing. It was squeezing the air out of him. He saw Sam still at his side, face white and angular with tension and expression one of determination. Sam reached for him, muttering something Dean couldn’t discern. 

And suddenly he could breathe again.

Except he was face down in the dirt and leaves. He rolled onto his side, and gasped for air. Something didn’t feel right. His left leg stayed firmly in place when he moved. He looked down, saw it was buried but it didn’t seem like it’d be too hard to dig out again. He sat up, instantly woozy, and revised that assessment. His earlier injuries screamed at him, and now he had more bruises and claw marks to add to them. Something warm yet also cold dripped on his face, from his forehead. He reached up, and his hand came away sticky with blood from the reopened wound. A second after he saw the blood, it dawned on him that he was sitting without the weight of the myling on his back. Dean understood. Sam had found his iron blade and he’d blown their chance of ending the myling.

“Damnit, Sam, you shouldn’t have done that,” Dean groaned, though if Sam hadn’t the outcome would have been nearly the same, only he’d probably be dead. He couldn’t hold saving his life against Sam. He tugged at his buried leg, arms and hands still too shaky to be of much use. “Help me out here.”

“I can’t, Dean.” 

Sam’s voice was a low whisper, and Dean didn’t like the tone. It didn’t sound like Sam. He stopped trying to get his leg out of the dirt and looked toward Sam. He squinted, the darkness making his brother look bigger and more awkward than usual. Sam leaned toward him, face right in front of his, his expression fervent and pained. Dean’s stomach felt like it was in his shoes. His left one, specifically, full of dirt and cold. 

“You…have to dig yourself out.”

“Sam?”

“I have to go.”

“Reeeest,” Sam’s oddly misshapen shoulder cried out. No. “Take me, take me.” 

All of Dean went cold, understanding what had really happened now. His head cleared of the foggy, injury induced confusion. He forgot about his damned leg. The weight of the myling was gone from his shoulders, but the memory of it remained, and the weight that was always there was still heavy. He reached for his blade, sheathed safely away. Sam gripped his arm, stopped him, shook his head once and then stumbled away on the path Dean had started down.

“Sam,” he said. His brother was running, faster than he should be able to, away from him. “Sam!”

The only response he got was the brash outcry of the myling, already too faint. Nothing could be a more effective motivator for him than keeping Sam safe. Dean tore at the dirt with his fingers, forgetting the blood and pain and ache of his body. He didn’t know how far he’d managed to get toward the cemetery, but it wasn’t far enough. Sam wouldn’t make it, and he couldn’t be stuck there while Sam died. It took him two long minutes to get free, and when he was on his feet he wavered and had to take thirty more seconds to let the lightheadedness dissipate. He started after Sam, itching to grab for the iron blade and holy water he had tucked in his jacket. The night air was filled with the myling’s shrieks. He followed them, and they grew louder with each step.

He found Sam ten minutes later, still moving but so slowly. One hand at the back of his jeans, where the knife was tucked, Dean raced forward. His other hand shot out, steadied his brother when Sam took a shaky step. The myling was enormous now, big and black and ugly with discontent. Blood streamed down Sam’s face, from an injury Dean couldn’t see. 

“Sam,” he said, apparently the only word he could.

“Almost there?”

The faint orange glow radiating from the town was evidence they were at least close to city limits. Dean kept his hand firmly on the handle of his blade. It was too late now. He couldn’t take this burden off of Sam’s shoulders, didn’t know how Sam had taken it from his or how he’d managed to get so far. He swallowed, his mouth full of bitterness. 

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Guh,” Sam said, fell to one knee, struggled to stand back up. The myling lashed out. “Good.”

“Sam,” he said again.

He gripped the knife handle tightly and pulled at it. Somehow, Sam knew.

“No, Dean. You carried it half…” Sam gasped loudly. The myling screamed again and dug its impossibly huge claws into Sam’s shoulder. Blood welled, then flowed. His brother still managed to get up. Dean was torn between admiration and terror. “Halfway. I have to finish.”

But Sam couldn’t. He took all of five more steps and went down on one knee again, this time one arm also jutting out to brace himself. Dean gave up the hold on the knife, using both hands to grab Sam’s shoulders in an awkward hold. The myling took another swipe, caught his own shoulder and then the side of Sam’s face. Sam cried out, a semi-sob that ripped into Dean as surely as the myling’s claws did. Sam’s knee started sinking into the earth, but he scrabbled and fought against it. Dean stayed close to his side, willed the scant energy he had into keeping his brother going. Sam was right. It had to end tonight.

Dean draped Sam’s left arm across his shoulders, shifted so that he had at least part of the load. In essence, he carried Sam while Sam carried the monster. Amazingly, amid the confusion and fear and myling’s continued awful caterwauling, Dean thought it was actually working and that they were making progress. His brother’s soft exhalations of pain were hot on his neck and in his ear as Sam leaned closer still with every step. He marked time and distance by Sam’s falls, and his own. Sam left one of his shoes, buried in the dirt, with one of the collapses. Dean no longer thought he could do anything but hold Sam up, couldn’t go for the weapons that would end this. Neither was in the shape to try again.

“Dean,” Sam whispered, and lurched into him again. 

Dean grunted and looked up. The cemetery was in front of them, as if from out of nowhere. It felt like they’d walked forever, but also like they hadn’t moved at all. The myling stopped attacking them, hissed in way that sounded almost happy. Dean couldn’t be sure that’s what the sound was, or if it was just some resonant ringing in his ears, from Sam’s involuntary gasps and whimpers of pain and from his own ragged breathing. They staggered the last few steps. Sam fell down, and took him with. Dean fumbled out from underneath his brother’s heavy arm, looked back and saw Sam’s legs were outside the cemetery’s perimeter and buried in dirt. The rest of him was inside cemetery grounds and the myling stood next to him instead of on top of him. It raised its ugly head and let out a mournful yowl. Then it scampered away, to the shallow grave they’d dug near a lone pine. The night was quiet except for a faint breeze and his and Sam’s labored breathing. It seemed so anticlimactic.

“Huh,” Dean said.

Sam groaned and fished around on the ground, trying weakly to get himself free. Fortunately for both of them, his legs weren’t deep. Dean was unsteady himself, and crawled to help unbury the limbs. By the time he was done, he was exhausted and his muscles quivered from the strain they’d endured. Sam managed to roll onto his back, but didn’t even try to sit up. Dean checked Sam’s injuries quickly, wanted nothing more than to get his brother cleaned up. Their wounds weren’t severe enough that they had to rush things, he reconsidered when the world spun a little. Anyway, the car was four miles away and they’d have to walk to the hotel. No way in hell was Sam ready for that. So he lay down next to his brother instead, just let them both recover a little. 

“You did it, Sam,” he said after a few minutes.

“No, I didn’t,” Sam replied immediately, voice hoarse with pain and fatigue and even entreaty. “We did it _together_.”

They had. For one fleeting moment, Dean actually thought about telling Sam everything. Every last detail of the message Dad had left him with, the terrible legacy. The words were at the tip of his tongue, and it would be _such_ a relief to let it all go. But then he looked at Sam’s pale, bloody face, the holes in his shoulder. He saw Sam’s pain and relived Sam collapsing again and again under the myling’s enormous bulk and wrath. 

He couldn’t be the one responsible for doing even worse to Sam.

“Yeah,” Dean said instead, feeling the weight of their world on his shoulders. “Together.”


End file.
